Jul 20, 2026 · 45 min · 12 segments
The year they went full time … they tripled. In this episode, I sit down with Nakie co-founder Dean Leibbrandt to unpack the team and hiring decisions behind their growth. They went three and a half…
Dean LeibbrandtGuestJess WhatmanHost
We were probably doing seven million in revenue and we still had full-time jobs.

What? We had team members that were literally working while we had full-time jobs.

We were obviously making really good money, we could be paying ourselves but we were still, oh my goodness, you have to jump out and believe this thing.
Dean, co-founder of Nakey, one of Australia's fastest growing sustainable brands.

And what we did, which I don't know, maybe it's smart, maybe it's dumb, but we ended up just putting on air ties.

We had some ladies that were dropping their kids off at school, packing, picking their kids up, taking them home, feeding them.

going coming back work with us till like midnight trying to pack these orders 22 we did three and a half million in a month and we ran out of stock before black friday even hit 205 000 in profit gone
what was the breaking point where you realized you just couldn't keep doing it that way dean co-founder of nakey one of australia's fastest growing sustainable brands welcome to built to lead
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We were probably doing seven million in revenue and we still had full-time jobs.

What? We had team members that were literally working while we had full-time jobs.

We were obviously making really good money, we could be paying ourselves but we were still, oh my goodness, you have to jump out and believe this thing.
Dean, co-founder of Nakey, one of Australia's fastest growing sustainable brands.

And what we did, which I don't know, maybe it's smart, maybe it's dumb, but we ended up just putting on air ties.

We had some ladies that were dropping their kids off at school, packing, picking their kids up, taking them home, feeding them.

going coming back work with us till like midnight trying to pack these orders 22 we did three and a half million in a month and we ran out of stock before black friday even hit 205 000 in profit gone
what was the breaking point where you realized you just couldn't keep doing it that way dean co-founder of nakey one of australia's fastest growing sustainable brands welcome to built to lead